Lettering kit



Sept. 8, 1970 FIGJ (:0 10 Io v -14 D A i I2 28 24 /2a w m I V /7] LL\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ L FIG.2

Q INVENTORS RICHARD C.DEMPNOCK. ARTHUR v. SMITH. l BY HARRY J. SILOAC,

SETTLE, BATCHELDER a OLTMAN.

ATT'YS.

United States Patent Office 3,526,986 LETTERING KIT Richard C. Dempnock, Detroit, Arthur V. Smith, Mount Clemens, and Harry J. Siloac, Detroit, Mich., assignors to The Demp-Nock Company, Warren, Mich., a corporation of Michigan Filed May 23, 1968, Ser. No. 731,461 Int. Cl. G09f 7/12 US. Cl. 40125 3 Claims ABSTRACT OF THE DISCLOSURE A lettering kit for arranging individual indicia units into an organized array for subsequent application to a receiving surface.

The present invention is especially directed to providing an inexpensive, easy to use kit by means of which individual letters or numbers may be easily applied to a receiving surface in a neatly and accurately lined group without requiring any great amount of skill on the part of the user.

Various features, objects and advantages of the present invention will become apparent by reference to the following specification and to the drawings.

In the drawings:

FIG. 1 is a partial front elevational view of a portion of the kit;

FIG. 2 is a cross-sectional view of the kit taken approximately on line 22 of FIG. 1, showing the com plete lower portion which has been broken away in FIG. 1 folded underneath;

FIG. 3 is a detail perspective view showing individual indicia units in place upon a carrier strip; and

FIG. 4 is a cross-sectional view taken approximately on line 44 of FIG. 3.

The kit of the present invention consists of three basic components, namely, a plurality of individual indicia units 10, a carrier strip 12 having an adhesive surface 12a and a holder or jacket 14.

The individual indicia units are die cut to a uniform height from a pressure sensitive adhesive tape such as that sold by Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company under the trade name Scotch-Cal. This. tape is conventionally supplied with its adhesive coated surface covered by a backing strip and hence, prior to use, the individual indicia unit 10 consists of the tape itself 16 and the backing strip 18 with a layer of pressure sensitive adhesive 20 sandwiched in between, as best seen in FIG. 4.

The folder or jacket 14 is formed from a suitable sheet material, such as cardboard, into a two-flap folder, one flap of which is formed with a pocket as at 22 in which the individual indicia units and carrier strip are stored. The other flap of folder 14 constitutes a template which is provided by adhesively securing a second layer 24 of cardboard to the folder. Layer 24 is formed with one or more elongated slots which are cut entirely through layer 24 to form indicia receiving recesses when layer 24 is bonded to the underlying flap of the folder.

The transverse width of slots 26 and 28 is chosen to be slightly less than the uniform height of the individual indicia units so that, when an indicia unit is placed in the slot, the unit is slightly bowed, as shown in FIG. 2.

In use, a plurality of individual indicia units are manually positioned within one of the slots of the template as 3,526,986 Patented Sept. 8, 1970 in FIG. 1. The bottom of the slots are provided with a series of uniformly spaced guide lines such as 30 to assist in aligning and spacing the individual units. The units are assembled into the template tape sides up in their desired final relationship to each other. The bowing of the'individual units, as indicated in FIG. 2, provides a a sufiicient frictional grip against the slot walls to retain each individual unit in the position in which it is placed so that the iudivdiual units can be easily and accurately spaced.

After all of the individual unts have been manually placed into position in the template, carrier strip 12 having the adhesive surface 12a is pressed downwardly onto the units, thus bonding the units to the carrier strip in a mirror image arrangement, as best shown in FIG. 3. The carrier strip is then lifted from the templates with the individual units bonded to it and the backing strip of each indicia unit is then removed to expose the pressure sensitive coating on the individual tape indicia units. The units are then applied to the receiving surface and the carrier strip removed, thus leaving the units in place on the receiving surface in exactly the same relationship as originally established by placing them in the template.

While one embodiment of our invention has been described in detail, it will become apparent to those skilled in the art that the disclosed embodiment may be modified. Therefore, the foregoing description is to be considered exemplary rather than limiting and the true scope of our invention is that defined in the following claims.

We claim:

1. A lettering kit for use in assembling a plurality of individual letters or other indicia of uniform height into an accurately spaced and aligned orientation to each other comprising a plurality of individual indicia units of sheet material formed to a uniform height, each indicia unit having its reversed side coated with a pressure sensitive adhesive layer and a removable backing strip covering the adhesive layer, a template including two layers of sheet material bonded to each other, one of said layers having an elongate slot therein of a width slightly less than the uniform height of said indicia units to thereby retain individual indicia units in said slot in said template in the location at which it is placed, and a carrier strip for transporting an assembled group of indicia units from said template to a receiving surface.

2. A lettering kit as defined in claim 1 wherein one of said layers of said sheet material is provided with alignment of indicia in the form of guide lines extending transversely across the region of said other layer exposed by said slot in directions normal to the sides of said slot and in uniformly spaced relationship to each other.

3. A lettering kit as defined in claim 1 wherein one of said layers of said sheet material is extended beyond one side of the other of said layers to define a cover flap, and means defining an indicia unit retaining pocket in said cover flap.

References Cited UNITED STATES PATENTS 2,447,011 8/ 1948 Hayes. 3,453,761 7/ 1969 Giesecke. 3,461,583 8/ 1969 Buck.

FOREIGN PATENTS 644,159 2/ 1964 Belgium.

EUGENE R. CAPOZIO, Primary Examiner R. CARTER, Assistant Examiner 

